William Morris Quotes

There is no excuse for doing anything which is not strikingly beautiful.

Give me love and work – these two only.

I do not want art for a few any more than education for a few, or freedom for a few.

With the arrogance of youth, I determined to do no less than to transform the world with Beauty. If I have succeeded in some small way, if only in one small corner of the world, amongst the men and women I love, then I shall count myself blessed, and blessed, and blessed, and the work goes on.

History has remembered the kings and warriors, because they destroyed; art has remembered the people, because they created.

No pattern should be without some sort of meaning.

No man is good enough to be another’s master.

Not on one strand are all life’s jewels strung.

We shall not be happy unless we live like good animals, unless we enjoy the exercise of the ordinary functions of life: eating, sleeping, loving, walking, running, swimming, riding, sailing.

How often it consoles me to think of barbarism once more flooding the world, and real feelings and passions, however rudimentary, taking the place of our wretched hypocrisies.

I pondered all these things, and how men fight and lose the battle, and the thing that they fought for comes about in spite of their defeat, and when it comes turns out not to be what they meant, and other men have to fight for what they meant under another name.

Simplicity of life, even the barest, is not a misery, but the very foundation of refinement.

Do not be afraid of large patterns, if properly designed they are more restful to the eye than small ones: on the whole, a pattern where the structure is large and the details much broken up is the most useful…very small rooms, as well as very large ones, look better ornamented with large patterns.

A man at work, making something which he feels will exist because he is working at it and wills it, is exercising the energies of his mind and soul as well as of his body. Memory and imagination help him as he works.

I know a little garden close
Set thick with lily and red rose,
Where I would wander if I might
From dewy dawn to dewy night.
And have one with me wandering.

Art made by the people for the people, as a joy to the maker and the user.

It took me years to understand that words are often as important as experience, because words make experience last.

The past is not dead, it is living in us, and will be alive in the future which we are now helping to make.

Nothing should be made by man’s labour which is not worth making, or which must be made by labour degrading to the makers.

If i were asked to say what is at once the most important production of Art and the thing most to be longed for, I should answer, A beautiful House.

What is an artist but a workman who is determined that, whatever else happens, his work shall be excellent?

It is right and necessary that all should have work to do which shall be worth doing and be of itself pleasant to do, and which should be done under such conditions as would make it neither over-wearisome nor over-anxious.

The greatest foe to art is luxury, art cannot live in its atmosphere.

To do nothing but grumble and not to act – that is throwing away one’s life.

I don’t remember being taught to read, and by the time I was seven years old, I had read a very great many books, good, bad, and indifferent.

Apart from the desire to produce beautiful things, the leading passion of my life has been and is hatred of modern civilization.

I want a real revolution, a real change in society: society, a great organic mass of well-regulated forces used for the bringing-about a happy life for all.

The reward of labour is life. Is that not enough?

I have said as much as that the aim of art was to destroy the curse of labour by making work the pleasurable satisfaction of our impulse towards energy, and giving to that energy hope of producing something worth its exercise.

Beauty, which is what is meant by art, using the word in its widest sense, is, I contend, no mere accident to human life, which people can take or leave as they choose, but a positive necessity of life.

Artists cannot help themselves; they are driven to create by their nature, but for that nature to truly thrive, we need to preserve the precious habitat in which that beauty can flourish.

Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.

We are only the trustees for those who come after us.

Happy as we are, times may alter; we may be bitten with some impulse towards change, and many things may seem too wonderful for us to resist, too exciting not to catch at, if we do not know that they are but phases of what has been before and withal ruinous, deceitful, and sordid.

I can’t enter into politico-social subjects with any interest, for on the whole, I see that things are in a muddle, and I have no power or vocation to set them right in ever so little a degree.